The present invention relates generally to physically handling mail and, in particular, to scanning mail to generate data, categorizing and mining the data, and invoking actions to a group of similar clients.
Retirement communities, such as housing complexes where senior citizens reside, are typically inundated with mail or post. As humans age our brains experience diminished functionality, which can impede our decision making ability. This potentially reduced decision making ability may make it difficult for senior citizens to perform daily tasks such as sorting through mail, paying bills, and managing their finances. Due to their presumed wealth and potential reduced decision making ability, senior citizens are susceptible to attempts to defraud them.
Other communities, such as a university where there are a large number of young adults for example, may also find it difficult to perform daily or weekly monetary, or similar, tasks for any number of reasons. For example, time constraints and inexperience can make it difficult for young adults to adequately manage their finances.
Communities such as a senior citizens complex or university often have a mail distribution center. Incoming mail is received, sorted, and processed at the distribution center and then sent to the intended recipients in the community. Similarly, outgoing mail is received at the distribution center from recipients in the community and then processed and sent out.
Incoming and outgoing mail may be scanned at the mail distribution center for capturing sender and recipient information and generating representative data. The mail may also be scanned for category and frequency of mail delivered to recipients in the community to generate representative data. The data gathered, or mined, by the mail distribution center may be used by the distribution center, or other entities, to optimize efficiency of the mail delivery service.
For example, mail management information may be synthesized from data associated with mail items. Addresses, including with addressee names, is synthesized from data collected from mail items. Confidence information indicating a measure of confidence that each synthesized address is a valid address is also generated from the collected data. Intelligence functions may be provided to enhance address synthesis capabilities. Input data for synthesis of mail management information may include data collected from physical mail items, other mail management information, or both. Features such as service delivery compliance management, network proficiency management, delivery route proficiency management, customer compliance management, a visibility service, address cleansing, delivery notification, addressee verification, synthesis of statistics, and/or synthesis of behavioral patterns could be implemented from the synthesized data.